


WiseOwl's Drabble Dump

by WiseOwlReader2018



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Feels, Gen, Konoha fucked up, Konoha is kind of messed up the longer you think about it, Other, SEALs, the ninja world is a dark place, what was Sarutobi smoking?, will add as goes on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:21:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21919759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WiseOwlReader2018/pseuds/WiseOwlReader2018
Summary: This compilation will be my grounds for various muses and shorts that come to mind. I've a number of short stories on here that need to be developed or posted and I'd rather not let them gather dust. Numerous fandoms will be written about and I hope to show off more as time goes on.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Redheaded
> 
> Summary: In a village of sneers and cold stares, Naruto is not an exuberant child. He is not a bubbly, cheerful spirit who's determination shines and burns as a star does. Treat a person like a monster and you get a monster, treat a person as a person and you get a person. For all the good intent, the results are laughable. Kurama had to admit one thing that his siblings were right about - he is a softy.

Naruto Uzumaki has never been alone.

The Voice had been present with him since toddlerhood. “Chew slowly.” “Go that way!” “Duck, boy!” “Don’t listen to them,” that and various other remarks, encouraging and supporting him.

He clung to that Voice because it was the only one, a mere leaf among a forest that shined bright for him. Thanks to that Voice, he could recognize certain tones and facial cues, could see the disdain and feel the glowering that followed at his back.

Thanks to that voice, he learned how to read and write. He reads fiction and non-fiction, learning history and from characters who he cries upon loss or sympathizes with them.

Here, he was not alone. He knew that someone or something cared for him. Here, he would not wonder if his parents abandoned him like a one-night stand. He would not cling to an old man and ramen stand owners as a one would with the desperation of being in a river, holding to the only rock there is.

From here, there is only the regret of old men and fools.

-

Kurama finds his new host’s seal to be more hospitable than Kushina’s or Mito’s.

He shudders, thinking of a woman, regal-bearing and expression clinical, seeing him as an object and not a person. That he is a tool, a sword that must be taken out, treated with oil and sharpened before being shelved after the blood is cleaned off. He dreads a return to a white landscape, walls tight and pressing in on him.

Kushina is not much better. Instead, she is fiery, taunting with words sharp and hot. Monster, monster, monster, that’s all he is. His claws are dripping with blood to fill an ocean, what would he know of love? What would he know of family? Of compassion and kindness?

On certain days, his limbs feel phantom pain. Stakes stab through his paws and arms, agony that stuck with him, binding him to a rock hovering in a void.

Oh, he’d thought of wiping that brat from this planet. His thought had rushed hot and cutting, to reduce him to fine dust and grinding his bones out of existence. It started out so simply and whatever script he had was going to the dumpster. That was less by design and more due to the subject that he was focused on.

Interacting with the boy as his lone support had been a calculated move. It would be counter-productive to rattle the cage so to speak, as patience was one of the first lessons he’d learned. That man was out there and he’d see his corpse mutilated until death was finally delivered. It would be far more beneficial to work together than apart.

“You’re the Voice? Woah! You’re so big!”

He forgets the words, anger burning to embers. The blood-red hair that falls about his head is all Kushina, and blue ocean-eyes wide with curiosity and intellect from Minato.

The questions tumble out like a waterfall and it is a stinging reminder: Naruto is a boy, a child of six years old.

Children didn’t have any notion of malice, his classmates learned from their elders, from peers. Hatred was taught, not born with.

 **Slow down or you’ll choke on your words.** Kurama said, struggling to marshal his feelings, days of gratitude and thanks against the decades of torment.

“Oh, sorry,” Naruto said and tilts his head, he comes in range against the bars, “my name’s Naruto, what’s yours?”

The embers sputter and Kurama stares, open-mouthed.

-

Of course, it isn’t easy.

The village makes his claws dig into the steel floor. Naruto lives a life where he is middling of the class. That doesn’t stop snide remarks and the ‘bumping’ into one another, sneers on their faces.

No name orphan, loser, outcast, stupid idiot.

Naruto knows he is loved, but it hurts all the same. Even Jiji, the Hokage himself, can’t help. He notices the repetitious reassurances, platitudes that he’d grown to recognize under Kurama’s teachings and in novels he’d been reading.

In one universe, a child is so dehydrated of love he’ll take scraps like a dog and hold tightly to them. He walks through a desert, desperate to find an oasis, no matter how small it is. In that universe, Naruto Uzumaki takes the coldness of Sasuke Uchiha, Haruno Sakura’s insults and fists with Hatake’s indifference and absent comments about his lack of improvement in spite of the fact that he's supposed to help his skill-set as his teacher.

To him, those days are as precious as a fly in amber. Nostalgia is a dangerous creature, though. It deceives, colors with a rosy notion that those days were the best of days. Such is the human experience as time goes on and a broken child sacrifices himself for a world that never cared until his life was on the brink.

That he wasn’t a monster until he killed a monster in the crater that was his ‘home’.

Here, Naruto smiles. He plays it well, that he’ll keep to the classes and his instructor’s words. He hugs the man who laughs, patting his adopted grandson on the back before he bounds off.

That awareness is a double-edged sword. He walks through a street, enduring the cold stares that follow, merchants fall quiet and mutters with one another. His fists tighten.

Kurama knows his thoughts. He can see the distress and cutting despair as plain as day. Konoha will drown this boy, struggling to keep his head above water. Each day is a walk through miasma, stifling and poisoning with every breath.

On and off, the Bijuu had spent his days studying the seals and poking at them. If being with Kushina had brought one positive, it was that he learned far more than he liked about the art.

Truly, it was a magnificent piece of work. Very impressive given the candlelight moment that was the life of a human being. Curiously, there was a separate seal embedded into the framework of the Shiki Fuiin.

Come the next morning and the first lecture is on seals: explosive and storage. Naruto perks up while Kurama grins.

(From hereon, everything changes)


	2. Redheaded Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: The timeline continues. Naruto cannot love and protect a place that shows him none. Even the old man with the hat is no use. Kurama acts to salvage his container's mind.

Seals become a fixture in his life.

Naruto can’t explain it verbally. The best he can give is that the sight of those designs, the arrays make his blood sing and set his brain alight. Kurama has to yell whenever he gets too deep into scribbling notes down in his apartment, encouraging him to get to bed.

Between that, keeping his place average across the board, he pranks. It’s not like the other timeline where he’s loud and desperate for attention, even if it’s negative. The acts are calculated, planned out with the help of a millennia old fox whose intellect leads to great discussions and brainstorming sessions.

The stealth and evasion give chuunin and jounin trouble. Naruto just laughs if he’s caught. If you lose, take a lesson from it. 

Konoha finds flaws, holes in their security unless otherwise pointed out. At first, it feels good. But, Sarutobi’s praise is empty, a surge of warmth that fades. That he’s doing such good for the village he loves.

In that other timeline, he is close to his grandfather figure. The Professor is so high atop a pedestal that he can do no wrong. Here, Naruto is wary and suspicious. Shinobi remain indifferent, keeping to the sidelines, even if he is overcharged by the grocer or is shoved away by a vendor screaming in his face.

Does he love the village? It sticks in his mind like a glass shard. Naruto loves Kurama-nii, a memory that still makes him laugh at the choking noise the Nine-tailed Fox had made after hearing that suffix. When he pulls up his shirt to inspect the seal, he sees a symbol of fealty. It’s his chain and leash to bind him down.

Thus, he does not feel any warmth towards the man. Slowly, the village is less a village and more a prison. Teachers brought up the Will of Fire, that all in the walls were to be treated as family and share burdens. Well, where did he fit in that vision?

The thoughts get too much at times and with practiced stealth, infiltrates the Shinobi library to explore and read. So? The receptionist always sneered at him, ugly and cold. The restricted section is a wealth of information on seals and the Uzumaki clan.

Clan. He has a clan? That meant family.

Konoha was ashamed in particular of the failure to protect Uzushio. In the least, the papers detailed that they did not go quietly against Kumo and Kiri. Was the Uzumaki part his mother or father?

He skips class the next day, a thick tight bulb in his throat. He recalls asking Jiji about his family, and it left him numb, hearing a buzzing in his ear and his breath loud. Classmates were nasty to him, bolting whenever their words are too much. The old man had closed his eyes and opened them. There’s a distant hope that he’ll have an answer, faces to imagine and names to carve into his memory.

“There is no point in bringing up the dead.”

Those visitations by the Hokage in the orphanage become tainted. The memory is marred, blackened as burnt wood. That he was singled out becomes all the more significant. Did he actually care or was he performing a duty?

Duty, says a part of his mind and he can’t help the chills, looking at this dilapidated apartment. If he cared so much, why did he give him such a shabby and unkempt place? Often, the wind howls, rattling the window and the pipes bang and groan. Sleeping is already a difficulty. His homework is scattershot, and while he gets it done sometimes, the noise hinders more than helps.

What about a guardian? Wasn’t there anyone who were friends of the clan? Allies only made sense, after all. 

Naruto’s breath hitches and Kurama decides that now is the time. Gently, he pokes at the seal, prodding after weeks of exploring the cracks and weaknesses.

Two souls pop into existence.

They will fade in three years time.

That time and love will be enough for a life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another good addition. I'd been mulling a Naruto!Deserts fic and considered what would lead him to do so. Also, it's a personal indulgence - Naruto should have been a Redhead.
> 
> Further: Sarutobi's line is one particular point that is canon. He says this to a child. A child who is hated and detested, for reasons he can't fathom and he says that? Seriously? That one moment destroyed any respect I had for his character. He couldn't have given a general description of Minato and Kushina? Couldn't he have at least assured him that they were ninja who loved the village and the duties they performed?

**Author's Note:**

> Give me feedback. Even if something is executed badly or badly written but has merit, it's worth developing and exploring. That's the greatest joy of writing in my mind - no matter whether it's terrible or not, you're writing. You're growing and learning more as time goes on.


End file.
